Wow, that's quite interesting. I knew about Tesla but didn't realize he did all of that. And I didn't know the truth about Edison. Is all of this, in fact, true?

Yup. Tesla is one of the most fascinating people I've ever read about. His list of "Did you know" facts is just astonishing....

A couple more:

In 1886, Tesla persuaded investors to fund the Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing Company. Tesla invented a revolutionary arc lamp and the company made money. The investors then promptly reaped the profits and fired Tesla, who was forced into manual labor to survive.

Although Tesla demonstrated his invention of the radio in 1893 and received a patent for it, the patent office stripped the award in 1904 and gave it instead to Guglielmo Marconi. Since both Thomas Edison and Andrew Carnegie had invested in Marconi and not in Tesla. Tesla fought for 29 years to reacquire his patent, finally getting a hearing in the US Supreme Court. With finding that 15 of Marconi's 16 patents were actually invented by Tesla himself, the court rules in Tesla's favor in 1944 – a year after his death.

When inventor George Washington Carver’s paintings were displayed at the 1893 World's Fair Exposition, they were lit using Tesla's AC power – although Edison refused to allow use of his light bulbs.

In order to keep electricity inexpensive to the public, Tesla sold George Westinghouse his own royalties, which were worth $12 million, for just $216,000. If Tesla had kept his royalties, he may have been the first billionaire, sharing financial history with the likes of John D. Rockefeller the worlds first in 1916, Howard Hughes, and Bill Gates who became the first man to reach $100 billion in 1999.

Tesla and the great storyteller, Mark Twain, were very close friends.

He claimed to have designed a death ray – or "peace ray,"(See... I wasn't joking. ) as he preferred – that could electrocute an approaching army completely at a distance of 200 miles.

Tesla adorned the cover of Time Magazine in 1931, and was praised by Albert Einstein as "an eminent pioneer in the realm of high frequency currents..."

In 1928 he received his last patent, which was a forerunner to the modern day helicopter, which was initially conceived of by Leonardo da Vinci. In his lifetime some have stated that he had applied for 840 patents and received 700. What can be found is that he has 112 US Patents and 34 International Patents. Regardless, he was known as the Father of Radio, Television, Power Transmission, and the Induction Motor.

Nikola Tesla's Death:

On January 7, 1943: Tesla died penniless and alone in room #3327 of the Hotel New Yorker. Soon after his death, the United States Government (with the help of the FBI) seized all of his research materials and writings, most of which never again reappeared.